Tool Kit: A Surge in Growth for a New Kind of Online Course

A Surge in Growth for a New Kind of Online Course

Illustration by The New York Times

Online course work has been a staple of American higher education for at least a decade. But over the last few years, a new, more ambitious variant known as a MOOC â€" massive open online course â€" has challenged traditional assumptions of what an online course can be. MOOCs have exploded in that short time, redefining who can enroll in college courses, as well as where, when and even why people take online classes.

Available globally to hundreds of thousands of people at a time, these classes depend on highly sophisticated digital technology, yet they could not be simpler to use. Signing up takes less time than creating an iTunes account. You can create a user name and password and start exploring the rapidly expanding course offerings.

The major Web sites already provide dozens of courses, as diverse as basic calculus and European intellectual history. It is both new and experimental, and as much as MOOCs have evolved since beginning in recent years, enthusiasts expect many more changes. From an early focus on technical and scientific courses, for instance, offerings now include the humanities and social sciences.

While there are some significant differences among the major MOOC Web sites, they share several main elements. Courses are available to anyone with access to the Internet. They are free, and students receive a certificate of completion at the end. With rare exceptions, you cannot earn college credit for taking one of these courses, at least for now.

“For a decade, people have been asking, ‘How does the Internet change higher education,’ ” said Edward B. Rock, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is the institution’s senior adviser on open course initiatives. “This is the beginning. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”

Navigating the world of MOOCs begins with three major Web sites.

EdX

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created this nonprofit joint venture in May 2012. It has already offered dozens of courses in subjects as diverse as physics, computer science, engineering, literature, ethics, law, medicine and economics.

Twenty-nine universities have signed up to participate, including the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Texas, Austin; Georgetown; Cornell; the Berklee College of Music; the University of Toronto; and the University of Kyoto.

Courses are offered for a designated period of time, with lectures and reading assignments provided in weekly segments. Videos of lectures are generally augmented with exercises, quizzes, labs and simulators. Like other platforms, edX emphasizes interactivity.

You can audit a course â€" meaning you don’t take exams or do writing assignments â€" or you can fulfill all of the requirements to earn a certificate of completion.

Each course’s home page provides an estimate of how many hours a week the course will require. Workloads vary widely. A Global History of Architecture, an M.I.T. class, requires at least five hours a week. Introduction to Computer Science, Harvard’s traditional introductory course, asks online students to complete eight problem sets, each of which will take 15 to 20 hours, along with two quizzes and a final project.

Coursera

Two computer science professors at Stanford began this commercial venture in April 2012. The original partners were Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan. Seventeen months later, Coursera has partnerships with 84 universities and offers more than 400 courses.

Yale, Duke, Wisconsin and the University of Chicago are among the participants, as are the University of Edinburgh and the École Polytechnique in France.

Because courses are free, Coursera hopes to generate revenue in other ways, like linking corporations with students who have learned specific skills. Coursera does not formally offer the option of auditing a class, but people certainly can. Anyone can simply watch the videos and do some, all or none of the reading and homework; you just would not receive a certificate at the end.

State of the Art: Sony’s Whole New Idea: Half a Camera

Sony’s Whole New Idea: Half a Camera

105 Seconds With Pogue: Sony QX: The Times’s David Pogue checks out the Sony QX camera, which adapts to smartphones.

Sony’s concept for the new QX100 is among the most brilliant in its history.

More Photos »

Unfortunately, the good idea ended with the concept. By the time the poor QX100 reached the production line, it never really had a chance.

Oh, wait â€" you want to know what it is?

It’s the answer to a long-simmering problem. Digital cameras take excellent photos, but aren’t good at transmitting them. Cellphones are great at sending pictures â€" but aren’t very good at taking them.

Sony’s masterstroke: Why not create a weird new half-a-camera that contains exactly the components that a cellphone camera lacks?

It could have a lens that really zooms. It could contain serious, professional “glass” â€" a Zeiss f/1.8 lens, with the quality, multiple glass elements and light-passing capacity that cellphones wouldn’t have in their wildest dreams. It could have manual controls, optical image stabilization and a tripod mount.

Above all, it could have a huge sensor, the digital “film.” This sensor could measure one inch diagonal â€" over 40 times the size of a cellphone’s sensor.

A large sensor gives you delicious amounts of detail, true colors and exceptional clarity in low light. A big sensor means less blur, because the shutter doesn’t have to stay open long to let in enough light.

Megapixels, on the other hand, aren’t a very big deal. Even so, Sony’s semicamera could offer 18 or 20 megapixels â€" enough for even giant prints â€" compared with the 5 or 8 megapixels on your phone.

So that’s what the QX100 ($500) is. There’s a half-priced junior version, too. More on that in a minute.

The QX100 is the craziest-looking camera you’ve ever seen. Even on close inspection, you’d swear that it’s just a lens. Not a whole camera â€" just a lens, like maybe one from somebody’s S.L.R. camera. It’s a black cylinder, 2.2 inches long, 2.5 inches across.

Somehow, into that space, Sony has crammed most of a camera. There’s a 3X telescoping zoom, with a zoom lever. There’s a real shutter button, a battery, stereo microphones and a memory-card slot.

There is not, however, a screen, because your phone already has a huge, really great one. So between this lens thing and your phone, you have all the elements of a top-notch photographic machine.

The QX can snap onto a plate bearing rubber-lined grippers. They’re spring-loaded so that they can firmly grip your phone. That’s right: You can actually attach a $500, semiprofessional zoom lens to your cellphone and take some truly excellent pictures.

To communicate with your phone, you install the clunkily named app, PlayMemories Mobile.

If you have an Android phone, and it came with an NFC (near-field communication) chip, you now just tap your phone against the QX100. That gestures “pairs” them and opens the app, ready for shooting.

If you have an iPhone or a non-NFC Android phone, things get trickier. You’re supposed to connect your phone to the private Wi-Fi hot spot generated by the QX itself â€" which, in this case, has nothing to do with the Internet.

Once you have everything set up, the phone’s screen acts as the lens’s viewfinder. Using touch controls on your phone, you can zoom in and out; take a picture by remote control; and adjust the exposure, automatic and program modes, plus aperture priority mode, manual focus and white-balance options. It all works, although the camera takes part of a second to respond to your phone taps; you should not expect pinpoint timing with your zooming or shuttering.

The QX100 is based on the best pocket camera ever made, the Sony RX100 Mark II ($750). (The Mark II is the successor to the previous best pocket camera ever made, the RX100; the Mark II offers a tilting screen, Wi-Fi transmission to your phone and even better lowlight photos.)

In other words, the QX’s pictures are truly terrific. Samples accompany this article online.

App Smart: Apps That Make the Most of iOS 7

Apps That Make the Most of iOS 7

App Smart: Best Apps for iOS7: Now that Apple has rolled out its latest mobile operating system, iOS 7, several apps take advantage of the new look and feel of iPhones.

Consumers have been lining up worldwide to buy Apple’s new iPhones, even braving a typhoon in Japan.

Infinity Blade III, a $7 iOS app.

Soundwave, a free iOS app.

TiltShiftGen 2, a $1 iOS app.

The new phones are also running on new software, the iOS 7 operating system. If you are among the nine million people who bought a new iPhone 5S or 5C during the first weekend of sales, or have just updated your old device’s software, you will want to try some new apps that make the most of the new capabilities.

One of the best tests for the new iPhones is the graphically intensive game Infinity Blade III. It’s a 3-D fantasy-battle game in which you fight your way through a mystical world, slashing with a sword controlled by finger swipes.

The game is exciting, and the graphics are its most impressive feature. They are highly detailed and are about the same quality as graphics on a gaming PC a few years ago. Infinity Blade III’s battles are a little repetitive, but the game is remarkable enough to warrant its $7 price.

Testing the new phones’ camera is also a must. But no matter how good the camera is, there’s always room for improvement. For editing photos or adding special effects like filters, try Aviary’s Photo Editor app. This app is one of my favorites for photo-tweaking thanks to its straightforward interface and powerful effects, like blurring of images or adjusting their contrast.

The app’s interface has been improved to align with iOS 7’s clean, simple look. A few improvements have made it easier to use, like putting the special filters, photo frames and customizable stickers in one location â€" the new “Supply Shop.” Best of all, the app is free, although many effects add-ons are not. It’s around $2 for a pack of filters.

A different but cool photo-effects app is TiltShiftGen 2, which adds a special distortion to a photograph so it looks like an image of a miniature or model, instead of a photo of the real world. The app looks great on iOS 7, and the controls are all simple, with intuitive gestures. TiltShiftGen is just $1.

For an unusual way to read the news, try Flipboard. This app aggregates news items from many sources. It presents items in a graphics-heavy display controlled through finger swipes to “flip” the screen to the next article. You can explore news items more deeply by tapping on them, and share what you’ve discovered over e-mail or perhaps Twitter. The app is customizable by news sources and categories, and it has been updated to look at home on iOS 7 â€" including subtle animations of the images when you tilt your iPhone. It’s highly useful, and it’s free.

Apple’s own music-playing app is built into iOS, but for a different experience check out the free Soundwave. This app is about discovering new music via a social network. For example, it can show music that your Facebook friends have played recently. More exciting is the “music map” feature, where you draw a circle on a map of your current location and the app tells you what people are listening to in that area. You can even hear snippets of music, so you can decide if you’d like to buy it later.

To show off the geo-location and processing powers of your phone, try the $1 app Night Sky 2, an augmented-reality guide to the heavens. It will show an image of the stars and planets above your head along with data on each one as you hold your phone up to the sky and move it around. It’s fun, educational and futuristic.

Finally, Twitter has long been one of the best social-networking apps for communicating with friends. It’s also a great way to keep abreast of the news in real time. The Twitter app has just been updated to suit iOS 7’s look so it’s visually clean and simple. The iPhone’s voice-controlled digital assistant, Siri, can now search within Twitter’s messages, making it easier to find information. If you’re new to the iPhone or haven’t yet tried Twitter, now’s a great time. It’s free.

Remember to check out the “near me” tab in Apple’s App Store app, which may uncover many more cool new apps that people nearby have downloaded.

¶ Quick Call

Moves is a popular activity-tracking app on iOS. It’s designed to log where you’ve been as you’ve walked or run as part of a fitness regime, and then displays the data in a simple and beautiful way. It’s just arrived on Android, and it’s free.

Washington Mayor Deems Entire City Government ‘Essential’ to Avoid Shutdown

A shutdown of the federal government, which could come next week if Congress does not pass a stopgap budget measure, would also require the government of the District of Columbia to discontinue its nonessential spending and send some employees home.

But Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Wednesday declared all of the district’s government operations “essential,” and told the White House that all employees would continue to work even if Congress could not reach an agreement on the spending bill by Monday, the end of the fiscal year.

“It is ridiculous,” Mr. Gray said in a statement, that the district “cannot spend its residents’ own local tax dollars to provide them the services they’ve paid for without Congressional approval.”

District spending is budgeted by the mayor’s office and approved by the City Council. The budget must then be approved by Congress each year as part of federal appropriations bills. Like federal government agencies, when a shutdown looms, the district government must submit its contingency operation plans to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

In a letter to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the budget office, Mr. Gray said that he had determined that all operations of the district government were “essential to the protection of public safety, health and property.”

The announcement came two days after Mr. Gray said that 21,000 of the district’s 35,000 employees would be considered excepted, or deemed essential. Among that number were police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians, school employees and some other social services workers.

The idea to keep the entire district government open during a shutdown seemed to emerge on Tuesday morning during a breakfast meeting between Mr. Gray and the City Council.

But it is unclear whether residents could actually expect the continuation of trash collection or the operation of libraries and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The district’s attorney general, Irvin B. Nathan, told the local radio station WAMU on Tuesday that such a plan to keep the city’s government open could violate the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits spending money that has not been appropriated by Congress.